Well Mark,

After defending the honor of Airline Pilots,
I suppose that I could be forgiven the fact that
I agree with your last two paragraphs, to wit:

What does this have to do with RAS? Plenty. I suggest
pilots who are very experienced can benefit from practicing
things that are VERY "rare." As you get more experienced, these
things become even rarer (because skill and judgement make them so.)
Slack rope, the need for takeoff abort, unexpected need for
release, full stalls, failed instruments, etc. are rare because
super experienced pilot skills are so good one avoids these
things well.

I suggest that if one spends enough time in the safe regime, the
rare events happen extremely rarely, but when they do, they
are more unexpected, more mentally jarring, and more potentially
devastating. The mental disbelief of an experienced pilot can be
more profound and more crippling than for a novice. I myself
have had a delayed reaction to a recovery because of disbelief
and had to go back to training from many years past to recover.
And I've seen this while flying with other experienced pilots...

It's like saying puppy dogs are cute. Of course you are mostly right
but it does not entirely explain why experienced pilots do dumb things.

I can not, for the life of me, understand how a pilot gets into
an inadvertant spin close to the ground. I have seen it and read
about it, but I don't understand it.

To take your thesis to its logical extent, I suppose I am an accident just
waiting to happen, as are we all. With over 15,000 hours of accident
free flying, I guess it's time to hang it up. (He says, modestly.)

So what's the point? How can we all benefit from these observations?

I'll check back with you after soaring on Mars with my flying wing, if I
survive.

Allan